{{currImage.selectedOrDefaultCaption('Botticelli, "The Last Communion of Saint Jerome" (14.40.642), in frame attributed to the workshop of Giuliano da Majano with lunette of "The Trinity" by Bartolomeo di Giovanni (1989.132)')}}

The great fourth-century scholar and translator of the Bible into Latin is shown in his cell near Bethlehem, supported by his brethren, receiving last communion. Famous in its day, the picture was painted in the early 1490s for the Florentine wool merchant Francesco del Pugliese. A supporter of the radical preacher Savonarola, Pugliese may have been attracted to the subject for its deeply devotional content.The frame, contemporary but not original to the picture, was carved in the workshop of Giuliano da Maiano; the lunette is by Bartolomeo di Giovanni, who sometimes collaborated with Botticelli.

The painting was identified by Horne (1915) with a picture described in the 1502 inventory of Francesco del Pugliese as "unaltro quadro dipintouj eltransito di sa[n] girolamo dimano didecto sandro" (another work in which is shown the death of Saint Jerome by the hand of Sandro [Botticelli] ). Its fame may be gauged by the citations in two early guidebooks to Florence. The Anonimo Magliabecchiano (Gaddiano 1542–56) lists it among Botticelli’s "small, extremely beautiful works." The picture is, indeed, among the most exquisite of the artist’s small devotional paintings. It has been dated as early as about 1490 but is more frequently placed between 1495 and 1500 (see, most recently, Cecchi 2005 and Zöllner 2005). Horne (1915) gives the most thorough account of the iconography and detailed information on Pugliese, a wealthy wool merchant and a notable patron of the arts. (He may have commissioned Piero di Cosimo’s paintings of primitive man in the MMA: 75.7.1, 75.7.2.) Pugliese was a staunch supporter of Savonarola and an opponent of the Medici (he was in the convent of San Marco the night Savonarola was arrested and in 1513 was exiled for having referred to Lorenzo de’ Medici as "il magnifico merda"). The subject of the picture has been related to Pugliese’s deep religious convictions (the most popular image of Saint Jerome in the fifteenth century shows him either as a scholar in his study or as an ascetic in the wilderness).

The subject is based on a letter addressed to Pope Damasus (366–384) describing Jerome’s death in 420 A.D. In the fifteenth century the letter was ascribed to Eusebius of Caesarea, but it dates, instead, from the twelfth century (the Pseudo-Eusebius of Cremona). Jerome is shown in his hermit’s cell near Bethlehem, kneeling in front of a bed covered with a coarse coverlet. On the back wall of the wattle cell hang palm branches, a crucifix, and a cardinal’s hat (although a doctor of the church, Jerome was not, in fact, a cardinal but was often shown as one). The arrangement is suggestive of a church altar. The saint receives communion from fellow monks, the two youngest of whom serve as acolytes holding candles. He is supported by another monk. All are tonsured. "And as soon as the priest who held the eucharist came near to him, the glorious man, with our aid, raised himself on his knees, and lifted his head, and with many tears and sighs, beating his breast many times, he said: 'Thou art my God and my Lord, who suffered Death and the Passion for me, and none other!’" [. . . And when the saint had made an end of these words, he] "received the most holy body of Christ, and cast himself again upon the ground, with his hands crossed upon his breast, singing the canticle of Simeon, the prophet, ‘Nunc dimittis servum tuum’" (Horne 1908).

Since 1989 the picture has been displayed in an exceptionally fine Florentine frame of the period almost certainly carved in the workshop of Giuliano da Majano (it should be compared to the frame of a terracotta relief in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; see John Pope-Hennessy, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1964, vol. 1, pp. 161–62, no. 136, fig. 158). The painting in the lunette of the frame shows the Trinity flanked by angels and has been attributed by Everett Fahy to Bartolomeo di Giovanni. Both Giuliano da Majano and Bartolomeo di Giovanni are known to have worked with Botticelli; the latter made a copy of this picture (Galleria Pallavicini, Rome). Another fine copy, evidently from Botticelli’s workshop, was formerly in the Balbi collection, Genoa, and is now in a private collection in New York. A contemporary drawing after this composition is in the Robert Lehman Collection (The Met, 1975.1.280).

Julia Cartwright. The Life and Art of Sandro Botticelli. London, 1904, pp. 136–37, 190, lists it as a work of Botticelli and notes that critics have identified it with the painting mentioned by Antonio Billi [see Ref. 1516–30] and Anonimo Gaddiano [see Ref. 1542–56].

Charles Diehl. Botticelli. Paris, [1906], p. 165, lists it as a work by Botticelli.

Herbert P. Horne. Alessandro Filipepi commonly called Sandro Botticelli, Painter of Florence. London, 1908, pp. 174–77, ill., attributes it to Botticelli and refers to "an apocryphal letter of the Blessed Eusebius," first printed in Florence in 1490, as the source of the subject.

Bernhard Berenson. The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. 3rd ed. New York, 1909, p. 117, attributes it to Botticelli.

Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in Italy: Umbria, Florence and Siena from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. Ed. Langton Douglas. Vol. 4, Florentine Masters of the Fifteenth Century. London, 1911, p. 270 n. 4, p. 290, call it a replica of the Balbi version, attributed to Filippino Lippi; Douglas attributes it to Botticelli and calls it the original of the copies in the Balbi collection, Genoa, and Abdy collection, Paris (later Benson collection, London).

Herbert P. Horne. "Botticelli's "Last Communion of S. Jerome"." Burlington Magazine 28 (November 1915), pp. 45–46, ill. p. 44, publishes Pugliese's will of 1502 that bequeaths the picture to the church of Sant' Andrea da Sommaia; notes that in 1519 this will was replaced by another that makes no mention of the work.

Herbert P. Horne. "The Last Communion of Saint Jerome by Sandro Botticelli." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 10 (April 1915), pp. 72–75, ill. (detail), details the history of the Pugliese family in the fifteenth century.

Raimond van Marle. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. Vol. 12, The Renaissance Painters of Florence in the 15th Century: The Third Generation. The Hague, 1931, p. 160, fig. 98, ascribes it to Botticelli and dates it slightly later than the Uffizi Saint Augustine.

Carlo Gamba. Botticelli. Milan, [1936], p. 169, fig. 148 [French ed., (1937), pp. 177–78, fig. 148], dates it in the first half of the 1490s and hesitantly accepts it as the one mentioned in Pugliese's will [see Ref. 1502]; mentions the picture of Saint Jerome referred to by the Anonimo Gaddiano [see Ref. 1542–56], notes that another such work by an anonymous artist was in the collection of Lorenzo de' Medici, and states that several copies of the composition exist.

Art Treasures of the Metropolitan: A Selection from the European and Asiatic Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1952, p. 225, no. 88, colorpl. 88.

George Kaftal. Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting. Florence, 1952, col. 529, fig. 607, attributes it to Botticelli.

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florentine School. New York, 1971, pp. 159–63, ill., list four roughly contemporary copies of the composition and a drawing after it in the Robert Lehman Collection, indicating that the work, though made for a private patron, was well known.

Bernard Berenson. Looking at Pictures with Bernard Berenson. Ed. Hanna Kiel. New York, 1974, pp. 186–87, ill., Kiel states that it is mentioned in Pugliese's "final testament of 1519" [but see Ref. Horne 1915, Burlington Magazine], and dates it not earlier than 1490, when Buonacorsi's "Life of Saint Jerome" was published.

Anna Forlani Tempesti. The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 5, Italian Fifteenth- to Seventeenth-Century Drawings. New York, 1991, pp. 230–32, fig. 78.1, dates it to "the Savonarolan phase of the artist's later years," between 1491 and 1503, and calls the Lehman drawing (MMA 1975.1.280) a contemporary copy.

Richard Stapleford. "Vasari and Botticelli." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 39 (1995), pp. 399, 401, 402–3 n. 14, p. 408, suggest that Vasari omitted it from his biography of Botticelli because he had not seen it.

Old Master Pictures. Christie's, London. April 25, 2001, p. 138, under no. 106, cites Everett Fahy for observing that it is based on the same cartoon as the version formerly in the Benson and Abdy collections.

Frank Zöllner. Sandro Botticelli. Munich, 2005, pp. 172, 175, 262–63, no. 80, ill. (color), dates it about 1495–1500 based on similarities in the handling of the drapery to that in the Transfiguration triptych (Galleria Pallavicini, Rome) of about 1500.

The frame is from Florence and dates to about 1480–1500 (see Additional Images, figs. 2–4). This small, exquisite tabernacle frame is made of poplar and is water gilded and distinctively carved. The pearl-and-rosette ornament is continued on the arch above the lunette painting. Rosettes with palmettes adorn its crest and sides. The base is carved depicting a water-leaf ornament while the cornice is an acanthus. Further description as well as an attribution to the carver, Giuliano da Majano (1432–1490), can be found in Italian Renaissance Frames (exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990, p. 43, no. 11). The frame was put on the picture in 1989.

[Timothy Newbery with Cynthia Moyer 2015; further information on this frame can be found in the Department of European Paintings files]